Stephen hadn’t really believed that stuff about an informal chat, but Malm started lightly enough, asking him at what time he had gone out on the moor on Sunday, why he had gone and when he had got home. His tone was polite and pleasant, but it held a note of wonder as if Stephen’s excursions were a highly unusual leisure-time activity. It was only then that Stephen understood they suspected him. They hadn’t got him here to inquire about someone else, but because they suspected him. When Marianne Price had been killed he had told the family gathering jokingly that he was the police’s number one suspect. Now it was true.

‘I wasn’t even in that part of the moor. I was walking in Goughdale.’

‘Where might that be?’

Manciple knew, Stephen could tell that, but he didn’t say. Stephen explained. Malm asked him about the mines. Did he know the location of the Duke of Kelsey’s mine and the old powder house? Stephen said he knew every feature of the moor, the soughs, the flues, the now-blocked horse levels. Manciple stared at him with blue eyes that made a harsh, ugly contrast to the crimson of his skin, the pale copper hair.

‘You knew Mrs Ann Morgan,’ Malm said.

‘I’d seen her once, months ago.’

‘Not according to Mr Morgan. According to Mr Morgan, you’d been to the house once in February and you went back again when he wasn’t there at the end of March.’

He made it sound as if Stephen had gone there because he knew the husband would be absent. Stephen didn’t say anything. He shrugged his shoulders. The sun on his back was making him sweat but he didn’t think it would have been better on the other side of the table where Malm and Manciple got the sun in their eyes. Manciple left then and Troth came in with a man carrying a tray with three cups of coffee on it and a plate of biscuits. Troth said something in an undertone to Malm and they both went out, leaving Stephen alone with the coffee. In their absence he took his jacket off, hung it over the back of the chair, and rolled up his shirtsleeves.

Troth came back, looked at Stephen’s arms as if he had done something disgusting, exposed himself perhaps, and opened the window. Malm sat down.

‘Mrs Morgan had a Volkswagen,’ he said. ‘A small yellow Volkswagen which she left parked on the Jackley road. Did you see that car while you were out?’

‘Yes.’

‘And touched it. Your fingerprints were on the driver’s door.’

Malm nodded to Troth and Troth pounced on him with a question. How had he got Ann Morgan to stop? Had he waved her down or had she recognized him? Stephen knew they suspected him but he was still shocked to be accused as directly and as insolently as that.

‘I didn’t even see her. I didn’t get her to stop.’

‘She got out of that car for someone she knew.’

‘She stopped and you spoke to her and then you opened the car door for her,’ said Malm.

‘The car was empty when I opened the door,’ said Stephen.

‘Go around opening car doors, do you, when the fancy takes you?’

They went over and over that for a long time. The room grew stifling hot, in spite of the open window. Sweat was running down his sides from his armpits. The same man came back with more coffee and cheese and piccalilli sandwiches. Stephen watched a shadow that was creeping across the floor as the sun began to pass overhead and he thought there was no reason why the table and chairs shouldn’t be moved into this shade, but no one suggested doing it.

After they had eaten the sandwiches Malm said he expected Stephen would like to stretch his legs. Stephen took that to mean he would like to go to the lavatory and it did, but Malm and Troth also took him outside and showed him a car, a Volkswagen of the same model as the yellow one, though this one was green, and got him to demonstrate how he had opened Ann Morgan’s car door and what he had done. He was sure they didn’t believe him and he felt they were humouring him towards something.

Back in the room with the table and the bentwood chairs Malm started on Marianne Price. It was a coincidence that Stephen had been associated with both girls’ deaths, had found Marianne’s body and then had found Ann Morgan’s car. Stephen said it wasn’t odd when you considered how often he was out walking on the moor.

‘Maybe too often,’ Malm said.

Stephen had never been able to deal with innuendo and he couldn’t now. He sat dumbly under that one while Troth went away and a man he had never seen before came in, a thin, quiet man who stared at him. Malm asked him why he had lost a day’s work to join the search party. What concern was it of his? Had he expected to find Ann Morgan’s body?

‘It was because I know the moor,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d be more useful than people who’d never set foot outside Hilderbridge.’ Inside him, deep down, was a small voice that whispered, because it’s mine, because I need to know what goes on there, I need to control it, that’s why.

‘Did you often have your lunch at the Market Burger House?’

‘I’ve been there once or twice.’

‘So you knew Marianne Price worked there?’

‘For the Lord’s sake! Everybody knows she worked there.’

The other man said softly, lightly, ‘What did you do with their hair?’

Stephen jumped up and pushed his chair back and it fell over with a clatter. ‘If this is going on I want my lawyer!’

‘Have you got one?’ Malm said dryly, but even he seemed to think the other man had gone too far, and before any more was said Manciple was back and they were reverting to the car and the time Stephen went out and the time he got back.

He knew he gave identical accounts each time he retold what he had done on Sunday evening. When he had told them four times they seemed to give up trying to extract a confession from him. Three cups of tea were brought in and a plate of shortcake biscuits. The room was in full shade now but it was still hot and stuffy. For the fifth time Stephen recounted how he had seen the car with its window half-open and seen the scarf and the sweater, and had opened the door and closed it again.

Manciple asked him how he had come to get a scratch on the side of his neck.

‘Brambles when I was out with the search party,’ Stephen said, and he turned his head and pulled down his shirt collar so that they could see.

‘Or a woman’s fingernail,’ said Malm.

Stephen shrugged wearily. It was too ridiculous. They said no more about the scratch but talked about the car again. At five they told him that was enough for today and he could go home, they wouldn’t keep him any longer. If he didn’t mind waiting five minutes they would take him home by car. Stephen said angrily that he did mind, he wouldn’t wait, he would walk home.

‘I’d keep off the moor, though, if I were you,’ said Malm. ‘If you insist on walking seven or eight miles when we’re perfectly willing to take you, you stick to the road. And give the moor a wide-berth for a bit, right?’

Standing by the desk, talking to the duty officer, was the girl from the Three Towns Echo who had interviewed Stephen in April. She looked very different, prettier, in her summer dress and pale blue cardigan. A chiffon scarf, blue, green and white, was tied round her head and knotted at the nape of her neck. She came up to him as he went towards the swing doors.

‘Is it you who’ve been all day helping police with their inquiries?’

Stephen attempted a light laugh. ‘Lord, yes, I suppose so.’

‘I’ve phoned it over to the PA.’

‘What might the PA be in plain language?’

She looked incredulous. ‘The Press Association. I thought everyone knew that. It’ll be in all the nationals, there’s been a man helping police with their inquiries into the moors murders.’

‘Not my name, though?’

She shook her head. They walked out into the street together. It was warm and sunny, the sky cloudless. ‘They have to be careful of libel,’ she said. ‘You might sue them.’